Dear developers, be honest with us. In my usual morning rabbit hole digging, I stumbled on Flow, a Pomodoro app for the Mac. According to the website, Flow is free.

I click on the “Available on the App Store” link. Once in the App Store, I look at the app details.

Then, things start to look different. There is an “In-app purchases” tag. Scrolling down to the details, I get to see this.

Now, I go up and read the app description. 😠 The developer fooled me. I feel cheated when basic and core features are under the “Pro” plan (like a timer custom duration). It’s a stupid one-feature app, and the developer manages to put the core feature under the pro plan!! I skip the app and move on because I don’t feel the developer is honest in his approach. Yeah, I know it’s called “marketing”.

Attorney General Ashley Moody:

“We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security. The existing lack of transparency in app stores can create a significant risk for American citizens, and could cause their personal information to be exploited by foreign entities of concern. That is why I am calling on Apple and Google to bring more transparency to their app stores—so consumers know what products are owned or developed by nations that may pose a national security risk.”

I think this is a great idea. In challenging times, I want to know if an app is created or owned by someone who brings money into bad actor pockets. I do have internal debate about this issue from time to time, having such labeling in the App Store would certainly help in my buying or subscription decisions.

This evening, using an Apple Shortcut called Clips, I imported the « Apple in 2022 The Six Colors report card » by Six Colors into Craft. It’s a 25 000 article that I started reading on my iPad, within Craft. Then, fifteen minutes into my reading, I asked Craft assistant to summarize the Mac … read more

I recently took a taxi ride to leave the airport as Uber taxis were unavailable and plagued with longer than usual delays. We were directed to the traditional taxi lines. I couldn’t use an app on my iPhone to call a taxi instead. Boy, it was a trip in the past. The taxi driver had no Google or Waze … read more

Google’s official announcement of incoming layoffs:

I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices. Source: A difficult decision to set us up for the future

And comment from Gruber:

There are numerous reasons the tech industry wound up at this layoffpalooza, but I think the main reason is that the biggest companies got caught up in a game where they tried to hire everyone, whether they needed them or not, to keep talent away from competitors and keep talent away from small upstarts (or from founding their own small upstarts). These big companies were just hiring to hire, and now the jig is up. Source: Daring Fireball

Here’s my view on this. Google is not alone. Microsoft and Meta announced major layoffs too. I’ve been working in IT for over thirty years, and I have never been in such a situation where we have so much difficulty finding or hiring new people. Big companies are competing for great talent not only with each other but also draining talent from smaller companies. It’s very difficult to compete in this context.

I think what is happening is not as catastrophic as it sounds. We will see a redistribution of the workforce in the industry. A lot of talent is being freed in the process from the big ones and is now available for the smaller companies where management is more sound, and financial posture is in good shape.

Today I spent some time in Matter to read a few articles. I went to the Staff Picks section, noticed those tweets between articles and remembered Matter's decision to leave the social portion in their early days. They preferred to go the Twitter route instead. That was before the Elon Musk fiasco. … read more

Interesting (and sadly valid point) from Om Malik:

Regardless of age, the big elephant in the room is that we are certified addicts to attention.

It doesn’t matter whether it is Twitter, Instagram, or Mastodon. Everyone is playing to an audience. The social Internet is a performance theater praying at the altar of attention. Journalists need attention to be relevant, and experts need to signal their expertise. And others want to be influencers. For now, Twitter, Instagram, and their ilk give the biggest bang for the blast. It is why those vocal and active about Mastodon are still posting away on Musk’s Twitter.

If we didn’t care for attention, we wouldn’t be doing anything at all. We wouldn’t broadcast.

We care. I certainly care that you care about my content, my words, and my thoughts.

Instead, we would socialize privately in communication with friends and peers.

Even in this social scenario, we are broadcasting and expecting that people are listening. This is how we are programmed. This is why social networks, and the web in general, are so addictive.

Source: Why internet silos win – On my Om

This video from birchtree@mastodon.social resonated greatly with me today. Here’s why. First, someone is finally calling out something about software subscriptions that I always wanted to call out myself. Every developer seems entitled to charge a subscription for whatever reason. Matt … read more

Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars. Most manufacturers are switching to touchscreens – which perform far worse in a test carried out by Vi Bilägare. The driver in the worst-performing car needs four times longer to perform simple tasks than in the best-performing car.Source: Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds | Vi Bilägare

I’m not surprised by these results. My wife always told me she wouldn’t buy a car with a touchscreen-only dashboard. Not only that is the fact that it is far less secure to use a touch screen simply because we need to look at the screen for a long period of time, diverting our attention to what is happening in front of us.

My gut feeling is that, eventually, we will return to a hybrid model when screens have to cohabit with physical dials and buttons. I’m paying close attention to what Apple will do in that space. The next generation of CarPlay that we got to see last June at the WWDC conference points in the wrong direction. But who am I to judge, you might ask!

If you don’t have a website, a blog or a newsletter and only exist on Twitter, then I give up. You’re not worth it. Thought of the night.

I get way better interactions here on Micro.blog (more often, better quality) than on any other platforms I ever spent time on. Just a not-so-random thought.

Whenever I want to go to Twitter, I should remember that Twitter is mostly a big dump of content originating from other places. So, why not consume content at the source instead? In my journey to a Twitter-free world, I’ll need to rebuild my habits of visiting the following places: * Techmeme: for … read more

Bloomberg: Apple to Allow Outside App Stores in Overhaul Spurred by EU Laws. Boom. If true, it’s massive. I can imagine Apple's engineering efforts to make it happen for WWDC 2023. I wrote earlier this year that I changed my mind about sideloading apps on the iPhone. I still stand with my change of … read more

I recently wrote my satisfaction about Readdle’s Documents.app on-boarding experience on the iPad. Now I’m reading about Spark’s cleverness take on emails. Without being as opinionated as Hey.com, Spark is a serious professional email client. Readdle’s home is Ukraine 🇺🇦 too. I’m considering … read more

I’m not a Qwitter. I don’t think I’ll ever close my Twitter account. But, there will be a day where I no longer post original content on Twitter, only cross-posting stuff from other sources. That day, I’ll refer to Twitter as the TwitterDump™. read more

I don’t know what will happen with Musk at the helm of Twitter. It’s probably going to turn really bad before turning potentially better (no guarantee here) but I have a backup plan: Micro.blog.

What. The. Fuck. This podcast example about a fake interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs is a blatant example of where some more thoughts should take place before putting high tech to work. What is the purpose of this? Is this a tech demo or some bad-taste proof-of-concept? It’s not hard … read more

Tweetbot hasn’t been updated for over 6 months, I thought a subscription was going to mean more frequent updates? Source: Letting my Glass and Tweetbot subscriptions expire – LJPUK: This blog post triggered the following thoughts. The movement to subscriptions in the software landscape is MASSIVE … read more

Telegram’s CEO, M. Pavel Durov, complains that Apple is making his life harder than necessary by having to wait for the review process to complete its job. When Apple finally accepts the update but requires him to remove the Telemoji package, he goes on to say: … this will motivate … read more

For many reasons that I’m aware of, I forgot that the iPad is the best device for reading and collecting information tidbits that are fueling my content creation workflow. The iPad enables me to effortlessly annotate and store content into Craft using a Shortcut. In fact, unsurprisingly, the iPad … read more